Forty-two Reasons
this. She must have failed her last mission. You’re her punishment.
She is good at hiding it. If you truly knew what was going down—which
you don’t—you’d decide to believe ignorance is bliss. That’s where you are now. Bliss.
Reason Number Nineteen On her nineteenth birthday she sidles up to you, dancing to the radio. She
crosses her wrists behind your neck and asks you to promise to love her forever.
This is an impossible request. It only happens in movies. It’s not genuine. It
can’t be. You find yourself compelled to say yes.
Reason Number Twenty There’s a raccoon on the fence outside her car, watching the two of you make out. You know it’s not a raccoon. It might be an alien. The interstellar community has some vested interest in you, and they’re competing with the government to farm your brain. Or else it’s a mechanized drone. You can tell by the impossibly white eyes and the perfect strips of grey and black fuzz, barely distinguishable in the haze bleeding from the dim streetlamp across the road. Glory is as shocked as you are. Her eyes are large and wet. She has yet to dig up any militant dirt on you, and you bet her boss in D.C. thinks she’s doing a shitty job. He’s probably set aside a small budget so his department can send animatronic drones to keep an extra eye on Glory. Make sure she isn’t doing her job wrong. To you, at that moment, it’s just a pervy raccoon. As far as you’re concerned, she’s doing everything right.
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